JSE-listed gold miner, AngloGold Ashanti, on Tuesday said it had appointed Chris Sheppard as the new Chief Operations Officer (COO) for its South African operations.
Sheppard – the 30-year veteran of South Africa’s ultra-deep underground mining sector – will succeed the current COO, Mike O’Hare, who is set to go for an early retirement sometime this year. Sheppard’s appointment will be effective 1 June this year when he will also be part of the AngloGold’s executive committee.
O’Hare will help Sheppard find his feet during the year in a bid to make sure that an orderly succession is achieved.
“We are extremely pleased to have someone of Sheppard’s calibre, and with his deep experience of underground mining in South Africa, to take the helm,” AngloGold CEO, Srinivasan Venkatakrishnan, said.
“Sheppard has a unique set of skills that will help us to continue enhancing safety, driving business improvement, tighter cost control and the technological development that Mike has championed,” he added.
O’Hare is a qualified mining engineer and the former MD of Murray & Roberts Cementation, one of Africa’s largest mining contractors.
Cementation is a division of South Africa’s biggest engineering & construction group, Murray & Roberts.
Sheppard is also an alumnus of Anglo American Plc’s Gold & Uranium Division and AngloGold Ltd., where he served as GM of deep gold mining operations in the Free State between 1997 and 2001.
He holds a Bsc in Mining Engineering from the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), and also completed an Advanced Management Programme at Harvard Business School and a Management Development Programme at the University of South Africa.
AngloGold Ashanti, based in Johannesburg, is the world’s biggest emerging markets gold firm and the lowest-cost gold producer in South Africa.
Sheppard – the 30-year veteran of South Africa’s ultra-deep underground mining sector – will succeed the current COO, Mike O’Hare, who is set to go for an early retirement sometime this year. Sheppard’s appointment will be effective 1 June this year when he will also be part of the AngloGold’s executive committee.
O’Hare will help Sheppard find his feet during the year in a bid to make sure that an orderly succession is achieved.
“We are extremely pleased to have someone of Sheppard’s calibre, and with his deep experience of underground mining in South Africa, to take the helm,” AngloGold CEO, Srinivasan Venkatakrishnan, said.
“Sheppard has a unique set of skills that will help us to continue enhancing safety, driving business improvement, tighter cost control and the technological development that Mike has championed,” he added.
O’Hare is a qualified mining engineer and the former MD of Murray & Roberts Cementation, one of Africa’s largest mining contractors.
Cementation is a division of South Africa’s biggest engineering & construction group, Murray & Roberts.
Sheppard is also an alumnus of Anglo American Plc’s Gold & Uranium Division and AngloGold Ltd., where he served as GM of deep gold mining operations in the Free State between 1997 and 2001.
He holds a Bsc in Mining Engineering from the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), and also completed an Advanced Management Programme at Harvard Business School and a Management Development Programme at the University of South Africa.
AngloGold Ashanti, based in Johannesburg, is the world’s biggest emerging markets gold firm and the lowest-cost gold producer in South Africa.
